Christians’ Support For Trump Undermines Their Public Witness

In a campaign full of surprises, perhaps none has been greater than the conservative Christian embrace of Donald Trump, a man who for most of his public life has been the poster boy for liberal (and libertine) values. Jerry Fallwell Jr. provided metaphor for this shift in Christian politics when giving his thumb’s-up to Trump…in front of a Playboy cover featuring The Donald.

Naturally, endorsing a candidate like Trump has its pitfalls for Christians, and by pitfalls I mean Grand Canyon-sized pockets of greed, adultery, fornication, and misogyny. Everyone recognizes that many of our political leaders are flawed individuals—after all, only a supreme narcissist or sociopath would likely run for president these days—but Trump has taken personal flaws to levels unseen in “conservative” candidates of recent memory. After all, just last year the media thought it was a controversy that Marco Rubio had accumulated a bunch of traffic tickets! Ah, good times.

In Trump, conservative Christians decided to hitch their wagon to one of the crudest and obscene public figures today. Why? Because he isn’t Hillary Clinton. But in their dance with the devil conservative Christians are in danger of damaging the very thing they are trying to advance: Christian values and beliefs.